Though his given name sounds as if he were destined to be a weather forecaster, Sonny Gray doesn’t mind it when his Yankees teammates call him “Pickles.” It’s a nickname his former battery mate, Josh Phegley, gave him in Oakland, partly because Gray had some success pitching whenever the A’s wore their green alternate jerseys and partly because Gray was fond of the briny vegetable.

It’s about the only remnant from Gray’s East Bay days. Baseball moves at a whole other speed now that he’s pitching for a team that has a reason to relish September. (One and only bad pun, I promise.) Life with the Yankees is everything Gray imagined, multiplied by a bunch.

When he fails to get decent run support from a Yankees lineup that’s heavy with pop — and this happens most every time Gray takes the mound for some odd reason — NYC’s clever tabloid headline writers go to town. When Yankee Stadium’s short, right-field porch cruelly taunts — as it did in...